White Coats for Black Lives Mentees: Citations & Writing

Zotero lets you:

• Add citations from databases like PubMed, Google Scholar, etc.
• Organize your citations into folders or groups
• Add PDF files of articles to the references
• Format citations in Microsoft Word (and other document programs such as Google Docs) to create bibliographies in any of 1000s of styles
• Share all or part of your database, with various degrees of permissions, and collaborate with others on documents

Need help getting started with Zotero?
See this Zotero guide and the Zotero support site.

This Zotero exercise set (docx) will take you through the basics steps of using Zotero

See also this self-paced online tutorial

"One of the feminist practices key to my teaching and research is a feminist practice of citation."

From The Digital Feminist Collective, this blog post emphasizes the power of citing.

"Acknowledging and establishing feminist genealogies is part of the work of producing more just forms of knowledge and intellectual practice."

Here's an exercise (docx) to help you in determining how inclusive you are when citing.

Additional Resources for Inclusive Citation Practices:

• BIPOC Scientists Citation guide (Rockefeller Univ.).
• Conducting Research through an Anti-Racism Lens (Univ. of Minnesota Libraries).
• cleanBib (Code to probabilistically assign gender and race proportions of first/last authors pairs in bibliography entries).
• Balanced Citer (Python script guesses the race and gender of the first and last authors for papers in your citation list and compares your list to expected distributions based on a model that accounts for paper characteristics).
• Cite Black Women Collective; in particular, their 5 Guiding Principles:
  1. Read Black women's work;
  2. Integrate Black women into the CORE of your syllabus (in life & in the classroom);
  3. Acknowledge Black women's intellectual production;
  4. Make space for Black women to speak;
  5. Give Black women the space and time to breathe.
• CiteASista.

General tips:

Is the topic of your paper clearly stated? The title should include what the paper is about, including geography, population, and subject.

Does your literature review provide sufficient background? Does it identify gaps? How does your research fit in with the body of knowledge on your topic?

Do your conclusions follow the evidence? Do you identify future research needs?

The National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity includes lots of tips and workshops on writing, publication, and more (Most of the website requires an account; some information freely available).

One thing they suggest is to tame your inner critic:

Inner critic: What you’re writing sounds stupid.
You: I’m just getting my ideas out on paper so they’re easier to sort out. I’m obviously rearrange everything later. Relax.

Inner critic: I can already see <insert Senior Scholar> tearing my work down.
You: Everyone knows that Senior Scholar is also a jerk who tears everybody’s work down. There are literally five other scholars in that same field who have told you that your work is not just good, but cutting-edge.

Inner critic: Someone’s already done this research. Don’t waste your time.
You: My angle to this research is totally different. Plus, it’s important to have different perspectives within the same research area.